The director of American Psycho deplores that we idolize Patrick Bateman, 25 years later

“I don’t think we never imagined that the film would be adopted by Wall Street’s guys … It was not our intention.” The hallucinating director in front of the reception of her film that has become cult, ironically became the model of the men she wanted to caricature.

Patrick Bateman has electrified screens for 25 years. The central character D‘American psychoimagined by BREAT Easton Ellis In 1991, brought to life under the features of Christian Bale In the year 2000 and a quarter of a century later, a strange and a trendy sinister emanated from the film, leaving its perplexed director.

Questioned on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the film, Mary Harron confided in Letterboxd Journal And admits to being uncomfortable in front of the strange fascination of certain young men, especially among the boys of Wall StreetFor Patrick Batemanthe New York socio-York banker and serial killer embodied by Bale. Popularized on Tiktok in the form of stylized clips and memes, Bateman has become, against all odds, a figure admired for his apparent mastery, his power and his aesthetics, completely obscuring the freezing criticism that the film draws up this type of man. As wrote GQ Magazine Some time ago: “The toxic cult of Patrick Bateman on Tiktok is one more sign that young men are lost.” And the filmmaker admits:

“It always leaves me completely perplexed”says Harron. “Neither Guinevere (his co-scriptwriter) nor I never thought that the film would be adopted by the guys of Wall Street, but then really not! It was not at all our intention. Did we failed somewhere? I do not know why it happened, because Christian makes fun of them in a very clear way … But hey, some people read the Bible and think that you have to kill a lot of people. Catcher-cores And decide to shoot the president. “

Harron recognizes that Tiktok and the memes have largely contributed to this glorification of Bateman, because“He is beautiful, he wears stylish costumes, he has money and power. But at the same time, he is played like a cheesy and ridiculous guy. When he is in a box and tries to talk about hip-hop to someone-it’s so embarrassing, this desperate attempt to be cool.”

What strikes her particularly is the irony that Bateman can become a model for some men, when she has always seen American Psycho as “A satire of masculinity, seen through the eyes of a gay man”.

The film is based on the eponymous novel of Bret Easton Ellisopenly homosexual, a detail that, according to her, Bateman fans on Wall Street seem to be completely ignored.

“The fact that Ellis is gay allowed him to see the homoerotic rituals between these alpha males – which is also true in sport, to Wall Street, and in all these universes where men glorify extreme competition and their virile power. There is something very, very queer in this way of fetishizing appearances and the gym.”

For Harron, American Psycho is above all “A film on a predatory company”a society which, according to her, is even worse today. She thus concludes, in a not very optimistic way:

“The rich are richer, the poor poorer. I would never have imagined that we would witness a celebration of racism and white supremacy – which is literally what we saw in the White House. I would never have thought that.”